Go Tell It On the Mountain

The black man’s everlasting struggle to achieve equality and fairness has progressed into an epic odyssey bound by only the human limits.From torture to civility, the life of a black man over the centuries has undergone dramatic and beneficial changes from which complete equality will not be achieved until the 1990s.With slavery disappearing in 1860s, the black man has to endure an entire century of segregation, lynching, and bigotry before he is seen as an equal to the white man.James Baldwin’s use of racial injustice in his book Go Tell It On The Mountain reflects the racial discrimination and prejudice of the post-World War II era. In this novel, John is the character who suffers racial prejudice from the outside and his stepfather’s hatred on the inside tormenting him into oblivion.Gabriel Grimes, John’s step father, married John’s mother when John was young, and he does not know that he and Roy are of different fathers.As a result of the abuse he suffers, John harbors a hatred of shocking intensity toward his stepfather.He lived for the day his father would be dying and he, John, would curse him on his deathbed.In balance to Gabriel’s destruction of his self-esteem is John’s secret satisfaction that he has been chosen for something better in life.He is shy, awkward boy, but he apprehended totally, without belief or understanding, that he had within himself a power that other people lacked; that he could use this to save himself; and that, perhaps, with this power he might one day win the love which he longed for.When it appears to him that his family has forgotten his birthday, John bitterl! y tells himself that it is all right, that they have done it before, and he deserves no better.A black man has only another black man to rely on for support and comfort; he would receive none of that from a white supremacist.John, like a black man, has only one person to rely on for comfort and support, his mother….